


Kings of the Wild Frontier

by Anonymous



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: Character Death, Flashbacks, Gen, Road Trips, Separations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-08 19:44:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5510636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Almost there...</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kings of the Wild Frontier

**Author's Note:**

> Just moving my favorite Dollhouse fics over from my LJ. Enjoy!

Laurence guesses waking up in the attic is easier the second time around because he already knows what to expect. He anticipates the bright lights overhead blinding him. This time, the deep electrical current followed by his sudden _awareness_ isn't so shocking. The inability to breathe, the tearing through the plastic sheet covering his body and pulling the needles from his skull is still hard, but familiar—and the way his body's trembling so hard the table rattles beneath him is to be expected.

Whiskey staring down at him with big blank eyes is the only thing he doesn't foresee. "What's happening? Where is everyone?" he spits out. Last time they all spoke he hadn't been the bearer of good news and he's frightened by what could've happened in his absence. He doesn't wait for her response to climb off the table shakily, and wobbles before catching himself against the wall. He's freezing, his teeth are chattering, and he feels like he's going to throw up, but that, again, is not exactly surprising.

She wraps her arms around herself and watches him impassively, doesn't move an inch to try and help steady him. "They want to put it all back together but it's too late."

He's too fucked up right now to try and decipher her babbling and he's about to ask her if she can speak English, just this once, when, suddenly, he gets it.

"They're at headquarters."

She nods and he tried to think. Tries to shake off the heavy cobwebs his stay in The Attic has left when a steady beeping noise prompts him to look around and he finally notices he's the only one who's woken up from his nightmare.

Whiskey's heavy hand on his shoulder startles him; he hadn't noticed her moving, and when he looks back it takes everything in him not to shake her off. She's smiling, all teeth and gums and empty eyes, and the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as she answers a question he hasn't yet gotten around to asking.

_Why did you wake me up?_

"Because we're family."

Laurence slowly backs out from under her touch; he needs to get out of this room. He walks out into the hall and flattens himself against the wall, is already halfway hunched into an almost crawl when he realizes no one's guarding the door this time. He eases up slowly and has to force himself to walk through the automatic doors, tenses in wait for an alarm to sound and gets suspicious when it doesn't. Something's going on but he can't stop to figure it out now.

He makes his way back into the dollhouse proper, stops when he sees his reflection and grimaces. He would look more like himself with a haircut and a shave but that will have to wait. The dolls' closet is right downstairs and the gun lockers are still in the employee lounge.

That'll do for now.

-

He's heard all about the mysterious explosion that rocked Rossum's headquarters and his hands are sweating as he listens to the click of her heels on the floor of the hallway outside her office door. He grips the gun tighter; raises it about shoulder-high.

When she opens the door, Dominic will have something for her.

-

He couldn't go through with it. He'd had her helpless, at his mercy and he'd let her go.

" _I'd rather die."_

" _I'd rather you didn't."_

Laurence leaves immediately afterward.

He's come to realize that he'll always come out with the short end of the stick firmly in hand whenever she's involved.

-

He doesn't go back to LA for a long time after that, he keeps tabs on them though. He knows they've gone back to Arizona and Laurence tries not to think of them, of her, and the mix of hatred and longing just her memory brings out in him. He just keeps moving. Sticks to himself, fights when he has to, runs if he gets the chance and that's Laurence's life, one nomadic journey that leads into another. Never settling down, never sleeping for more than an hour at a time because he has to watch his back. He can't remember the last time he opened his mouth to say something other than, _Back off!_ Or _Fuck you!_ Or _I'll blow your goddamn brains out if you move one inch!_

 He thinks maybe the loneliness is what brings him home again because he certainly can't go back to _her_. That maybe it's the reason why he's gazing up at a building he hadn't looked back at when he'd left it almost a decade earlier. Laurence makes his way to the underground entrance, checks around to make sure no one sees before he makes his way down.

-

The first thing that hits him is the smell. Something putrid and strangely sweet, a stink he'd come to recognize in the NSA and that had become his familiar since the Thoughtpocalypse: decomposition. Whiskey's standing in the middle of the floor when he sees her again.

"Hello Mr. Dominic," she says as though she'd just seen him the day before. He wouldn't be shocked if, in her mind, she had.

"Hello Whiskey," he replies and takes another look at the decaying bodies around them.

He'd kept tabs on her as well as the others after he realized she hadn't gone to Arizona with them and he's surprised she allowed anyone to get into the building. She might be crazy but she's shown an uncanny ability to take care of herself and keep her location under wraps.

"How did they get in?" he asks, motioning to the butchers at their feet.

"They led them here."

"They who?"

"The man and the woman and the little girl."

He narrows his eyes and steps closer. "You let people down here?"

"No," she says in a low voice, "They came. I helped them find home."

She looks like she's about wander away and he grabs her tightly before making a concentrated effort to loosen his hold even though she hasn't acknowledged his touch at all.

"Home? Are you talking about Safe Haven?"

She just tilts her head and he clenches his teeth. "You told someone where Safe Haven is?"

"I have to check the kitchen," she mutters, and turns to leave but he won't let her go.

"No," he says curtly before softening his tone. "Just tell me when they visited."

He hopes it was recent enough that he could catch up. They were travelling with a child and had to be moving slower than what a man on his own could accomplish.

"I'm not sure…"

By the looks of the bodies he guesses around four days but was hoping for better news. He knows now they're too far ahead and starts to form another plan.

"We have to go to Safe Haven, Whiskey."

"No," she says with a frown and more certainty than he's ever heard from her. "I have to wait for him."

"This is serious," he almost yells. "No matter what we have to protect Safe Haven." As he says it, the memory of _her_ face flashes through his mind so quickly it barely even registers.

"Whiskey…," he starts, and stops because he's not even sure why he feels like she should come along. All she would do is hold him back, slow him down, make him vulnerable, but this is the first conversation he's had in years and no matter how insane it's been, Laurence isn't sure he can go back to the silence.

"No," she says quickly and he decides to try another tack.

"He's probably already there you know. I bet he's waiting for you," Laurence says, when he'd really like to just shake her and make her wake up. Make her realize what's going on outside and that Boyd isn't ever coming back.

The empathetic expression covering his face feels as artificial as it probably looks but there's something in her eyes, something different from the usual barrenness. She's _hearing_ him.

"No," she says quietly and starts to try and pull away but Laurence just tightens his grasp. She'll probably have bruises in the shape of his fingers tomorrow but, honestly, he doesn't really care.

"I have to wait for him."

"He's probably been there all this time, Whiskey. It's been impossible to get into LA with the blockades. I had to use contacts to do it."

Her face softens and he goes on. "You have to come with me."

There's a stretch of quiet and she looks like she's studying him. Like she's looking for something and he prepares himself to _make_ her come with him when she tilts her head to the side and does the impossible: Make things easy on him.

"All right."

-

They've been driving for two days straight when she finally says something.

"Wait..."

"We can't, Whiskey," he sighs. "There are probably Butchers on this road. We have—"

"Stop!"

The determined sound of her voice prompts Laurence to slam his foot down on the brake and stop their car in the middle of the road.

"Goddamn it Whiskey!" he yells. The brakes let out a loud whining noise at his sudden maneuver and he knows that they're fucked if the car sputters out. "What is it?"

"Listen," she says, and points off the road into a tight thicket of trees and undergrowth and all Laurence can see is darkness and a few shadows outlined by the moon.

"There's nothing out there Whiskey. We have to get off this road, we're sitting ducks."

"No." She reaches across the gear shift and ignores it when he tries to shrink away from her touch. She places her palm against his ear.

" _Listen_ ," she demands with the same certainty that got him to stop and he finally hears it, the soft distant sound of music. He turns and stares blindly out of the front window; it's something classical and familiar but he can't place it.

Along with other things abandoned because of the tech, such as movie theatres and computers and getting to stay in one place for longer than a night, someone would only decide to listen to the radio when he was feeling particularly suicidal.

After all, Rossum wiped half the US by sending the signal out on a couple hundred of the company owned stations after five. They wiped most of the other half by buying ad time on a few networks after seven.

One of the worst things about what happened after wasn't what you'd immediately think of. It wasn't the destabilization or the sudden influx of crime or even all the dumb shows walking around. It was that Rossum had taken all the fun things and given them sharp edges.

All they'd left for anyone to do was survive.

The gentle echo of what he can now make out as a piano makes him lethargic and if he wasn't distracted by the sound of Whiskey's door opening he doesn't know how long he would've sat there listening.

He turns quickly and calls, "What are you doing?" to her back.

She doesn't answer as she closes the door behind her and begins to walk toward the sound. He leans over and rolls the window down quickly, whispers, "Whiskey," fiercely but she doesn't answer and he stares after for a moment contemplating his options before he finally shuts the car off and gets out to go after her.

"We can't leave the car Whiskey, we have to get out of here."

She doesn't respond and he uses the bright white of her gown as a beacon to lead him through the tight growth of bushes around them.

The music gets louder and closer they get the more suspicious he feels. There's something wrong here. This whole scenario is too complicated for butchers, they'd more likely run out of the trees with a knife than anything this sophisticated but that just raises more warnings in his mind.

"Whiskey…"

She doesn't even glance back and so he stops calling and just tries to keep an eye out as they enter into a clearing. There's a large object in its center and Whiskey begins to move toward it.

"Don't," he says emphatically and grabs her arm but when she turns her eyes are clear.

"He isn't there is he?"

Laurence takes a step back, asks, "Saunders?" dumbly and she just watches him.

"He's dead," she states this time and Laurence looks down before meeting her gaze again.

"There's no way we can know—"

She turns away mid-sentence and starts back toward the thing when he grabs her arm.

"No, Whiskey! Something's not right here, we have to leave!"

"Let me go," she mutters and there's something in her voice that makes him drop her arm without a fight. He knows this is a set up, that this, whatever it is, is gonna get ugly but he can't bring himself to make a run for it without her. Laurence just watches as she moves further into the clearing. Whiskey turns back to him and the moon is bright enough that he can see her smile. That and the flicker of movement just beyond the tree line at her back.

Things go fast after that.

He reaches for the gun in his waistband but it's too late. There's a sudden bright light from the box ahead of them and a loud shattering noise like the sound of a light bulb breaking times one thousand. Whiskey screams then and it’s an eardrum-bursting mixture of a gurgle and a shriek that he knows will have him waking up in a cold sweat for years to come. He wants to go to her but is momentarily blind and that's all it takes. Someone has an arm around his neck, his pockets are emptied and the gun at his waist is pulled and shoved into his own back. Spots of color throb in his sight as his vision comes back and he hears a horrible noise. Like someone's trying to speak underwater.

He twists in the man's arms and when he sees Whiskey again she's on the ground. The front of her gown is dark and slick with something he won't let himself think of as blood.

"Fuck, Lance," a wiry, shirtless, redhead screams as he bursts forward, "I said I wanted it to disorient them not kill them!"

The brown haired boy holding him looks over with a properly chagrined expression. "That wasn't planned man."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you said that last time too."

Laurence tries to position himself to break the hold but the guy tightens his arms and Laurence almost wants to laugh. Then he looks down at Whiskey thrashing in the dirt and trying to breathe and he gets the idea that maybe she wants to scream only she isn't able to anymore and he feels sick. He shoves the thought back because, oh _God_ , that would make this unbearable and he needs to think.

The one he assumes is the leader shakes his head as he moves toward Whiskey and looks her over. "Damn," he mutters while shoving her with the toe of his sneaker. "What a waste. She looks like she's pretty cute—old, but cute."

"We've still got this one," the kid with the gun calls. Eager for the attention, eager to please.

The redhead looks him over with a sigh, "He's kinda ancient too though."

"We could describe him as distinguished. He's already got the suit and everything."

Red raises his eyebrows and steps closer, looks Laurence over before nodding slowly. "Yeah, he's not too bad looking either. You were right about that music, man, it does attract a higher caliber product."

Laurence has already thought of a way to escape. He could kick the redhead in front of him square in the chest, throw his head back into the bridge of the brunette's nose and just take off. There's enough wooded area around them for him to disappear into easily enough but the thought of leaving Whiskey behind stops him cold.

He would assume by the amount of blood she's lost and what looks like a very large shard of glass sticking out of her throat that she's as good as dead anyway. Then he looks at her, watches as she lifts her hands to her throat and struggles to take short breaths and Laurence knows he's not leaving without her. He also knows he can't fight five people and waits instead. Waits for the boy holding him to get sloppy.

Red has migrated back over to Whiskey and sighs down at her before turning to the group with a flourish and saying, "I guess it's time to escort our prize back to the car then boys." He begins to push his way through the undergrowth and the others move into line behind him with Lance and he bringing up the rear.

Their position is perfect and his heart speeds up the way it always does when he's about to pull one over on someone.

"Why are you doing this?"

Lance's jaw twitches but he doesn't answer, just shoves him forward so Laurence tries again. Shifts tack from the frightened captive to plain curiosity keeping one eye on his captor and the other on the group slowly moving farther away from them.

"Come on, why"

Lance eyes him for a moment. "Why do you think? For money," he finally says like he's already answered this question more than once.

"Well obviously," he deadpans and something about Lance's face shifts. He's on the hook.

Laurence slows them almost to an complete stop and quickly darts his eyes to Lance's still-moving friends. The boy loosens the arm around his neck and Laurence is almost able to face him. "What I meant was why all the theatrics? You can go to any city and take people off the streets without anyone batting an eye. Why go through all this trouble?"

Lance eyes him for a second before answering. "Because I'm a man of many talents and I like to use them every now and then."

"I get it."

"You do," the kid asks disbelievingly.

"Yeah seriously, I know what you mean," Laurence mutters, respiration increasing as the four others move farther out of sight. Lance should notice this as well but he doesn't. He's too focused on Laurence.

"You do now? Well what would you know about it?"

"Well you see, I'm a man of many talents as well Lance. Want an example?"

Laurence brings his elbow back and up before he can answer and hears the satisfying crack of a nose breaking. The kid goes down grabbing for the gun and Laurence just misses catching a bullet in the side. He disappears into the brush around them and starts back to the clearing as they yell behind him.

The four other boys run forward and scan the tree line, finally pulling their friend to his feet when he can't be found.

"He just—"

"Yeah, we saw," Red cuts in and breathlessly screams, "Spread out, catch the fucker!"

Laurence watches them and pulls his jacket off before quietly moving back toward the clearing. He keeps his eyes open for any sort of weapon. A rock or stick or anything and comes up empty. He almost slips on the underbrush twice and only barely keeps his feet beneath him the second time. His heart’s pounding out of his chest and he has to rest for a moment, freezes when a boy with curly dark hair, a green wife-beater and a very large knife runs by. He thinks maybe he hasn't been seen, being crouched low and half shrouded by moonlight, until the kid stops suddenly and turns back toward him.

This is the second time he's let someone walk up on him and Laurence isn't sure if he's just getting old or if these kids are better at this than he originally gave them credit for.

"Hello," Curly says.

"Hello back," Laurence replies.

"You broke my friend's nose."

"Your friend deserved it."

He smiles, "I guess he did."

They don't speak again. Just circle one another in a fighting stance until Curly jumps forward and knocks Laurence to the ground. He grabs the boy's wrist with both hands and—it's an undignified move but it's a undignified world—bites down on the kid's forearm until he tastes blood. Even then the kid refuses to let go of his weapon and knees Laurence so hard in the balls he sees stars and opens his mouth, releasing Curly on a gasp.

The kid moves to strike and Laurence blocks it. Lowers his free arm and punches the kid as hard as he can in the kidneys. He's tired and being positioned on his back doesn't allow for the sort of leverage needed to make his hit a disabling blow but it's enough. He's able to reach back and pull himself back enough that he's almost free when Curly grabs his leg ad shoves the blade into his inner thigh.

Laurence gasps as the knife breaks skin, rolls onto his back and tries not to scream, he doesn't want to make too much and noise and alert his attacker's friends, as the kid rips it all the way down his calf. He pulls the other leg up and kicks back hard into Curly's face. He flies back, groans in pain and Laurence slides across the ground to drag Curly up into a chokehold as he pulls the forgotten knife from his leg.

Laurence doesn't stop stabbing when Curly begs him too or even when he stops moving. Only the sound of the blade breaking against bone brings him back to the present. He stares down at the body for a moment, sort of amazed by the carnage he's reaped. Laurence has never stabbed anyone before to death before. Shot, yes, but never stabbed and there's an intimacy in the act that's unsettling.

He looks down at the kid in his arms and starts to imagine him in a time before this one. One where the world wasn't torn to shreds and Curly wasn't yet an asshole with nothing to lose. He imagines him as someone's little boy and Laurence can't even take solace in writing him off as a monster. The two of them are too much alike.

He shoves the body away. He knows he had no choice, that one of them was going to die and that it's better it was the other guy but he still has to force himself to look away and focus on the gash in his leg.

He pulls his tie off quickly, wraps it around his thigh and ends up having to put one end of the fabric in his mouth because his hands are shaking so bad. He's not worried over whether his artery has been cut, he'd be dead already if it had been, but he's afraid as he reaches down to touch the wound. He fingers the cut gingerly and feels a wave of nausea so strong he can't beat it back slide up his belly. He leans sideways to throw up, _quiet,_ he thinks, _gotta fucking stay quiet,_ helplessly. He takes a minute to breathe afterward, spits to try to get rid of the bad taste in his mouth and wishes for water before hearing something and stumbling to his feet.

They're out in the clearing again and he strains to hear one say,"…got Kev I think."

Laurence narrows his eyes and looks through the bush to Red staring into the distance with a tight face before throwing his hands up. "Fuck it. This dude's on some Green Beret shit and it's not worth it. He's too old anyway."

"But—"

"Look, I'm all for you staying but I'm not. We got his car at least," he says, holding up the keys and one by one the rest of his gang follows him back out to the street. He hears doors opening and slamming shut and one of them yells, "no hard feelings homey," on a laugh as they burn rubber driving away.

-

He waits until he can't hear them anymore before finding his way back to Whiskey. He stares down at her for a moment and she doesn't even look like herself anymore. She'd always had a sort of ethereal beauty, even with the scars she'd looked like something otherworldly, something from another time.

He carefully kneels at her side to pull out the glass embedded there and her face is slick with blood, riddled with jagged cuts. She doesn't look anything but human now. He leans down to place his ear between her breasts and hears exactly what he expected to. Nothing.

Laurence stands quickly then and tears his gaze away, scrubs the blood from his cheek, turns in a full circle and he feels like he's about to lose it until his thigh hits a tree. The pain is so horrible it takes his breath away and makes his eyes water.

It also sobers him.

He gets himself back under control and leaves to scout out a grave, somewhere he can remember easily, and finally settles on a spot at the edge of a fence. He goes back to her, tries to pick her up but his legs buckle under the weight. He lets her down, grasps her forearms and drags her over.

Laurence gets to his knees then and digs into the earth until his hands are cut and bleeding and God he feels like a piece of shit, like nothing, like this is the moment when the depths of the Thoughtpocalypse truly hit him as he pats her down and shoves her bracelet into his pocket. He rolls her into the hole he's dug and there's just enough dirt to cover her.

Suddenly, the name of the music comes to him. _Gymnopédie No.3_.

It brings back the memory of a company party he'd attended with _her_ ages ago. He'd been sitting at Ambrose's piano with a cigarette hanging from his lip and a glass of Bourbon near his elbow when she found him.

" _Satie huh?"_

He'd turned when she made her presence known and watched her lean elegantly against the edge of the doorway.

" _Always was a bit romantic for my taste."_

His eyes open slowly and he swallows whatever emotion she brings up inside of him, looks down at Whiskey buried in a grave six inches deep in the middle of nowhere. A grave no one will ever visit.

He places his hand over where her heart should be beating and wonders why he can't cry.

-

The first day is easy in retrospect. Adrenaline's still coursing through his veins. Numbing the pain and allowing him to move faster than he should have been able to with an open gash down his thigh but he doesn't let it calm him. There's so much blood in his shoe it squeezes over the side when he steps down.

Laurence ignores it.

-

By the third day he can barely breathe and worse, he can _smell_ the wound. It's like the time he went on a trip for a week without taking out the garbage or when he pulled a dead rat from behind the wall of his closet.

Like horrible, cloying, decay.

He hesitates before looking at the cut. No matter how careful he's tried to be it's infected. Thick yellowish green discharge oozes out when he touches it and the edges of his skin are curling away and turning black.

Laurence's leg is rotting before his eyes.

He's terrified but bites it back, falls to his knees but only dry heaves because there's nothing in his stomach to throw up. He tries to stand again and realizes he can't so Laurence reaches his hands forward and drags himself across the pavement.

He can't stop now.

-

Dying by the side of the road is a common phenomenon these days and he's never hoped for something better. He never expected a funeral, to be burnt on a pyre or sent out to sea. He never expected anyone to care.

He licks his chapped lips and stares at a bird flying overhead. Only now that he's lying a ditch can he admit to himself that he wishes things were different. He hears something in the distance and doesn't really pay attention. It's not the first time a car has passed him but he opens his eyes when he hears the engine cut out and a door opening.

He tries to raise his head but it falls back before he can see anything. There's dirt in his mouth and he can't even bring himself to spit it out. Two people move over him and blocks the glaring sun. They stare down at his prone body for a moment.

" _Probably a butcher."_

" _No, he's too clean."_

" _Are you serious? There's blood all over him."_

" _Yeah but it looks pretty new and his hair's cut."_

The man leans closer. _"He's not snapping at us either. Help me get him in the car."_

"No," he tries to order but he can't shake them off when they pick him up and then he's in their back seat, his head cradled in someone's lap and before he can fight it, he blacks out.

When he comes around later, he can see a bright light through the lids of his eyes. He thinks of blood gushing from a throat by the beat of a heart, of a choked up gurgle and slides awake. He tries to open his eyes and he finds he can't, tries to call Whiskey's name and realizes that something's been shoved down his throat.

" _He's waking up_."

" _Give him more then_."

Laurence doesn't recognize the male voice but the female response slows him down. There's something familiar about her.

" _Don't look at me like that_ ," she continues. " _Just do it_."

He wants to keep fighting but he can feel his will being sapped from him by the pull of sleep.

-

His eyelids feel glued together and his vision's blurry as he cracks them open into a slit.

"He's up," a man says, and a woman with a fall of dark hair across her shoulder moves over him. He can't make out her face.

"I took me awhile to believe it was you," she murmurs. "Even though you were still wearing a suit and acting like the old, in-charge Mr. Dominic when you were lucid I still couldn't believe it."

The back of her hand rests against his forehead and he moves into her touch; too doped up and vulnerable to feel ashamed. He hasn't been touched so gently in a long time.

"God I hated you," she whispers more to herself than to him. "That's kinda harsh but it's true. I hated you so much. Even after you went good I still did." Her hand slips back into his hairline and she drags her fingers through it.

"It's funny how the end of the world can change things huh? How it can make you able to forget almost anything as long as it was done by a familiar face."

She moves her hand away after a moment and steps out of his line of sight. He hears a door open.

"Who are you?" he asks. Voice scratchy and rough.

There's a moment of quiet before she says, "You've still got a bit of a fever. Go back to sleep," and closes the door behind herself.

-

He's woken up a few minutes ago and is now sitting in a hospital bed under a window with a broken pane of glass in the upper right hand corner. The room's filled with dull sunlight and the walls are the yellowish white of a place long forgotten. He tries to swallow the dry aftertaste of medicine as he stares down at the blanket over his legs. He can see that the both of them are still there but he remembers how it looked not too long along, how it _smelled_ , and he has to build himself up to see what's left.

He pulls the blanket back slowly; sees only a bulky white bandage when the door creaks open and he throws the blanket back over his bottom half. He takes a moment to compose himself before turning to see whose come in, and he's shocked silent before croaking out her name.

"Ivy?"

"It's been a long time right?" she asks with a strange smile. "I was surprised to see you getting dragged in here too."

He stares at her for a long while without responding. Despite the presence of a few lines around her eyes, she hasn't changed much since the last time he saw her.

"I spoke to you earlier. Do you remember?"

He has a hazy memory of a woman touching his hair but that's it.

"It's all right." She says when she sees that he doesn't. "It might come back to you later."

"I couldn't open my eyes..."

"You were in surgery. We taped them shut."

"Surgery?"

Another man, about Ivy's height with sandy blond hair, comes into the room and when? Laurence tightens up, she notices.

"He's cool. You're lucky," Ivy says. "Anton here was studying to be a vet before the Thoughtpocalypse."

When he stares back, confused, she points to his leg. "He worked on you. Your leg was pretty messed up."

Thinking about his leg makes him think about Whiskey and thinking of her brings him back to why he was coming out here in the first place. Safe Haven.

"Thank you and it was great seeing you Ivy but I have to go."

"You can't," the man, Anton, says and Laurence looks at him with defiant eyes.

"Yes I can."

"No you can't," he repeats, slower this time, as if Laurence might have some sort of mental deficiency. He wants to say something but he doesn't have time to argue. He narrows his eyes and rubs his temples, annoyed.

"I can't do this right now. I have to go," he mutters, deciding that however long he's been here it's been too long. He ignores the other man when he tries to stop him and stands, only to feel a pain so sudden and pointed he can't even yell. He falls to the ground, and Ivy moves into his line of sight.

"You can't go because you can't walk; not yet anyway. We're hoping therapy will get you back on your feet."

She stares at the leg in question with a penetrating gaze. "It would be a shame for it to be useless after all the work we did to save it."

Anton walks closer. Mutters, "You popped some of your stitches," before helping him back up onto the table. Ivy cuts the bandage off as his doctor goes to a drawer and starts putting things onto a tray.

"I'm sorry but we're not going to be able to offer you anything this time," he says over his shoulder. "You've already used your lifetime allotment of pain meds."

"Lifetime allotment?" he asks with a hiss. The cut is starting to throb.

"You can imagine how hard it is to come by pain meds these days," Ivy explains, "so we have to ration."

Laurence admires the pure practicality of it but his relatively new caring side rears its head and asks for answers. "So if someone uses their share, gets hurt and needs surgery you guys, what? Let them die?"

Both Ivy and Anton stare at him for a beat.

"Well we can't operate without anesthetizing them can we?"

He doesn't answer and Anton tosses him a thick, twisted, black piece of cloth. Adjusts the light on his wound as he sits. Anton begins to pull the skin together between his middle and pointer fingers as Laurence bites back a gasp of pain. He'd been through a lot worse with the NSA but the most horrible part of every scrape had always been the stitching up afterwards.

Ivy, already half out of the room, grimaces. "I'll see you later," she says, before slipping out and quietly shutting the door behind her.

Anton waves goodbye without turning and looks up before bringing his attention back to the problem at hand. He points at the roll of cloth he'd tossed to him earlier and places the needle next to his skin.

"You might want to look away and bite down on that."

He doesn't, of course, look away. The busted stitches are at the very start of his cut and since he can't see the rest of the wound Laurence watches him push the torn skin together and shove the needle through. It stings more than anything and the pull of thread through skin is definitely painful but it's over fairly quickly and all that's left is the dull, deeply uncomfortable muscle throb he started with.

Anton stands and moves to a drawer. "Here's some penicillin," he states and tosses a bottle at him."With the issues of cleanliness we have around these parts you'd _better_ make sure you take those."

Laurence catches it one handed as Anton digs around in the drawers.

"Ivy said she'll handle your therapy and until you can get up on your feet again and we have a wheelchair somewhere—"

"No."

He can handle anything. He can infiltrate underground crime rings, become a top officer in the NSA, stab a kid to death and loot a dead body. He can survive on his own because he's willing to do whatever it takes. Laurence doesn't need anyone's help and he definitely doesn't need a goddamn wheelchair.

"Thanks but I can handle this on my own."

Anton eyes him before letting out a sigh. "Look, I realize you're a capable dude and before this whole deal you were somebody or whatever so I'm gonna let you in on something right now. Your leg is fucked for the foreseeable future and if you don't use the chair you won't be able to fend for yourself and if you can't do that you're not going to make it. No one's going to get food for you and no one's going to empty your bed pans so you'd better get back onto your feet soon and if you can't, you'd better make yourself useful in that chair because people who aren't carrying their weight are dragging us down and we learned a long time to cut our losses."

Laurence is breathing hard by the end of his spiel, red-faced and shamed by getting spoken down to like that by a goddamn kid.

_ Of the two people here, one of us is a genius, and the other is a security guard in a very lovely suit. _

He clenches his teeth and mulls over different responses that all come out sounding like a dad lecturing his wayward son. Instead, he bottles them up and takes a breath. He's always been self-sufficient, smart, even vain when it came to his abilities and his appearance but he has to get over that now. He has a bum leg, his car's gone and he can't get to Arizona without some help.

He has to accept that he can't do it all on his own anymore.

He raises his hands and gives his doctor a big, fake, smile. "Where's that chair then?

"I knew you were a smart dude," Anton mutters off hand and pulls a small vial out of his pocket. He shakes a powdery substance out and presses it into three lines, snorts two fast with barely a breath in between and squeezes his eyes shut afterward.

Laurence watches him, asks, "Were you high when you worked on me?" He's not even particularly mad, just curious.

"Oh yeah," he replies, "and with the amount of horror I see on a daily fucking basis this shit gets me through another day without blowing my brains out. I'm not likely giving it up any time soon."

"I didn't say anything," Laurence replies and watches Anton bend to take more before he stops short.

"Excuse my manners," Anton mutters after a moment, "you…," he trails off and motions to the substance laid out in front of him. Laurence shakes his head no thanks. He doesn't want to get out of his head. He doesn't want to lose control and watching Anton's eyes go soft and fuzzy makes him feel both jealousy and pity that this man can do just that.

Anton snorts another line and Laurence is kind of impressed that he's isn't on the floor convulsing yet

"It's funny," he says, staring at his doctor as he slumps against the wall at his back. "We can't get toilet paper everywhere but we can get coke."

Anton laughs loudly at that and drags his hands through his hair. His face is slack and the curve of his mouth ticks gently up as he lets the high take him where it wants him to go.

"We all have our priorities."

-

For the first few days he doesn't talk to anyone but Ivy and all their conversations consist of two-word responses like _that hurts, stop it_ and _get out_. He prefers to be alone. Laurence turns on the water and the pressure is so low it's more like a trickle but it's warm and he's come to appreciate  such small luxuries these days. He climbs onto the edge of the tub carefully, leans his head back into the flow of the showerhead before sitting straight and wetting a towel to wipe himself down with.

He decides now is as good a time as any to finally peel back the bandage and look at his leg so he does.

The leg is horribly bruised and noticeably smaller than his right one. The skin of the cut is pink and vulnerable to his touch, the area around it is puckered and red. It itches but that's good, it means it's healing and so he doesn't scratch no matter how much he wants to. There's something strange looking about his knee and he guesses that whatever it is is why he can't bend it. He looks away then and starts to sponge himself off.

Laurence realizes now that he has to come to terms with the fact that he's never going to be like he was.

-

He never thought he'd get along with these kids, that rearranging his life to fit in with people at least ten years his junior wouldn't work but it's easy. He slips into the rhythm of the hospital without even noticing.

Laurence even begins going with their group every weekend to pick the stores they can find clean of C.D's instead of looking for something to wear other than the pair of jeans they'd given him on his first day. It's simple because they don't care about the genre, the artist or the beat, they just want to hear something other than the omnipresent quiet that surrounds them. Anything besides the random people they pluck off the sides of roads struggling to breathe.

They turn on the radio even though they shouldn't and slip whatever they've found in. They snort lines to Animal Collective. They drop acid to Michael Murphy. They fuck to the beat of Jill Scott.

They do anything to forget and after awhile he does too.

Laurence never joins them, just watches their bodies gyrate slickly from his wheelchair on the second floor balcony with a half-drunk bottle of bourbon in his hand.

He can't believe there was a time he ever thought he was better than this.

-

It's kind of freeing actually, not being in charge, not having to worry and he hears voices sometime that night or early the next morning. Something about a pulse and default personalities and staying underground he doesn't worry because he's still half-drunk and he was never fully awake in the first place.

Laurence slips back asleep.

-

When they tell him what _she's_ trying to do the next day the dreams start up again.

In the first, he kills her. Laurence knows she's too smart to fall for some big, convoluted plan of revenge. He would have to do something simple. Work his way back into her life. Lull her until the moment he could creep into her room and shove a gun into her gut or run her off the road or slip something around her neck and squeeze as tightly as he could. Those are the ones he has the most, dreams of the myriad ways he can pay her back but sometimes it’s different.

Sometimes he slips into bed next to her, climb over her back, fucks her slow and easy and rests his face against the sweaty spot between her shoulder blades to keep from saying anything stupid. Something like, _I love you_ or _I hate you so much you stupid bitch_ or _oh God please don't leave me again_ or _I missed you_.

Either way, he wakes up the next morning with his cock in his hand and a mess to clean up.

-

Everyone who has some sort of imprint and wants to stay as they are goes underground almost immediately. Some leave the group and when everything shakes out just he, Ivy and three others are still above ground.

-

It happens two days later.

He and Ivy have decided to do his therapy outside in the garden when a liquid wave of electricity roils the sky above their heads. He doesn't know how long they've been staring up but Laurence only looks down when he feels something on his hands and sees that his fingernails have broken through the skin of his palm.

"Do you think it worked?" she asks quietly

He doesn't know how to answer.

-

They don't leave until two months later when he's healed enough to start using crutches.

They don't talk about it either, just start packing and get into the car parked around back. He gets into the driver's seat and even though he should probably let her take the wheel he doesn't. After all, he's still got one working foot and, really, that's all they need.

"We can go into the city and help rebuild," Ivy says, "but…," she hesitates before going on. _"She's_ back at Safe Haven."

He looks at her and she looks back without a trace of mocking or curiosity or even an opinion on where they should go. They've never spoken of anyone or anything to do with their other lives and, once again, he doesn't answer. Just backs the car out of the garage, turns wide and speeds down the street.

-

"Ivy…"

He starts on their fifth hour of driving but she cuts him off.

"It's fine," she responds, "that was another lifetime."

He nods and turns back to the road when she starts to speak again.

"You've got to admit it though. It's pretty awesome that you tried to attic me and then proceeded to get yourself atticed not once, but twice."

She lets out a sharp bark of laughter that's not exactly bitter without being exactly sweet.

"It's hilarious right?"

"Yeah," he answers and stares at the road ahead. He thinks of the pain and the sweat. Of the blood on his hands that he could never quite get off because no matter how much he washed them the scene would just keep repeating.

"It's a riot."

She has a little smile on her face that says she has an idea what he's thinking and that she doesn't feel sorry for him in the least.

-

The rest of the drive is silent.

-

They stay to the back roads. Keep their lights, the radio and the knowledge of their presence as quiet as they can because you can't always trust the wire or what people are gossiping about even when it's about finding their long lost daughter or cities being rebuilt or the first elections in a decade. When they pass a sign welcoming them to Arizona, Laurence pushes them from 75 mph to just a hair over 90. His fingers squeeze the wheel until they're numb and he only relaxes when the sign is covered by the cloud of dust they leave in their wake.

 _Almost_ there.


End file.
